A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

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Saturday, June 04, 2011

Bridge to the past

This isn't the first time I've shared the story of London's Blackfriars Street Bridge (see here and here for earlier entries) and it likely won't be the last. That's because it manages to survive and thrive in an era where we're just as likely to tear down and rebuild an anonymous box. And taking a trip through neighborhoods of anonymous boxes and arriving at something that was old before my grandfather was born is a trip worth taking.

You get to touch history here, just walk right up to it on its rough-hewn wooden deck and run your fingertips along the mottled, rust-tinged green iron beams and stringers. If you close your eyes and scrunch them just so, you can almost feel what it must have been like to be in this very place all those years ago.

As long as this bridge continues to exist in some form, it gives us the opportunity to have moments like this. When we lose structures like it - as we recently lost the Sarnia Road span - we lose something more than metal and wood.

Your turn: Do you ever hang out on or near a bridge? What's the appeal?

2 comments:

I love the old bridges. Nyssa had her senior picture taken under one in Mississippi. Most of the time, I am driving my parents somewhere when I see them and cannot stop to get photos. I still have the hope to park and walk up to where the tug boats and other barges are moored near one of our draw bridges. Someday.